Now
that Haruka has her first Kanto ribbon, our heroes set their sights on
Satoshi's next destination, the Battle Arena. However, before
they get back on the road, Haruka decides to try a famous ramen
restaurant in the area. Satoshi, on the other hand, wants to
visit a local fighting dojo, so he and Masato separate from the young
Coordinator and a love struck Takeshi. As Haruka waits in line
for her food, she sees that
the shop's owner is being dragged out of the shop by a woman named
Tsugeyo. Desperately wanting to try Yamabuki City's famous
"Battle Ramen," Haruka follows the two, eventually ending up at the
dojo where Satoshi and Masato had come to visit. There, they
witness a feud between the owner of the ramen restaurant, Kyoutarou,
and his father, the dojo master Hamaguri-sensei. Kyoutarou wants to
continue running the ramen shop, but his father wants him to take over
the dojo instead. The two eventually decide to have a battle to
determine the ramen chef's fate, but a back injury suffered by
Hamaguri-sensei brings the battle to a halt. Satoshi and Haruka
decide to step up and have the battle for them, so each trainer picks a
fighting-type pokemon to battle with. Satoshi fights with
Hamaguri-sensei's Sawamura while Haruka battles with Kyoutarou's
Ebiwara, and for a while the two seem to be evenly matched.
However, the Rocket-Dan appear and interrupt the battle in an attempt
to steal all the dojo's pokemon! At this time, Tsugeyo and her
Kapoeira send the Rocket trio blasting off again.
After the battle, Hamaguri-sensei decides to let his son continue
running the ramen restaurant and hands the dojo over to Tsugeyo.
Now that the gym has been successfully passed on, Satoshi and his
friends resume the path toward the Battle Arena.

ThoughtsSo here we are. After eight
long years, 4Kids has finally arrived at their final episode of Pokémon. They're done
with the series, and personally I'm excited. I know that Pokémon is the company's
best dub (which isn't saying much considering the crap 4Kids puts out),
but I'm still happy to see the show fall into the hands of a
company who's probably more competent in everything Pokemon. Of
course, we have no idea how the new dub will end up,
and I do worry that too many fans are assuming that the new dub will be
this orgy of Japanese music and non-edits when we really have no proof
that this will be the case. But - and I know I'm probably jinxing
the new season by saying this - it can't be any worse, right?
The thing that sucks about the whole dubbing thing is that it pretty
much overlaps any discussion about this episode as a whole. I
mean, even I fell prey to it by opting to start this comparison by
talking about the dubbing instead of talking about the actual episode
like I usually do. And that's a shame, really, since this episode
is really too good to do that to. While the resolution of the
dojo's conflict seems a little rushed, it is nice to see Satoshi and Haruka
have a little rivalry again. Seeing the team split up into a
Satoshi/Masato and a Haruka/Takeshi group was neat as well, and I
really liked the fact that there's more of a Japanese feeling to this
episode than there's been in all of Advanced
Generation.

Dubbing-wise, the episode fared a lot
better than I thought it would. While the voice acting for the
side characters (Master Ham and Terry) sucked ass, the episode was
surprisingly edit-free. There wasn't a single violence edit made
in the entire episode, which is particularly surprising considering the
last episode to predominately feature fighting-type pokemon, "A Shroomish Skirmish," didn't fare so
well. 4Kids didn't shy away too much from Japanese culture
either, opting to call ramen "noodles" instead of being lame and
painting over the ramen with a sandwich like you'd expect them to do
nowadays.

Cut--5 seconds altogether
The first two seconds of the episode are trimmed away.

Later, two seconds are removed from the episode's title screen.

Then, immediately after the episode's title screen, a second is removed
from the shot of all the people waiting in line for the ramen store.

Paint Edit
4Kids' final paint edit of the series:

Click on each image to view a larger version.

This is actually a really good summary of what 4Kids' editing of the
series as a whole. The very first paint edit, way back in "Pokémon, I Choose You!" was
made to erase Japanese writing from a Monster Ball. Now, here we
are eight years later with "Pasta La Vista," and the company's still
erasing text. Except now, the "text" they're erasing is from some
made-up language that was created specifically for 4Kids so that these types of
edits wouldn't have to be made.

I won't be missing edits like this when PUSA takes over.

Music Edit
During our heroes' training with Sawamura and Ebiwara, Ready Go! plays in the
background of the Japanese version. In the dub, we get
instrumental music.

Cut--3 seconds
Two seconds are removed from the shot after Kids' WB!'s final
commercial break.

...and the final 4Kids time cut ever involves a second being removed
from the TO BE CONTINUED... screen.